Alice’s Evening… Stare? Blade Runner Blues

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“What is walking and do walking simulators simulate it?” sounds like the sort of toss I’d open a post with. “And if a walking simulator isn’t simulating walking, can a game simulate a walking simulator without walking at all?” Good. Great job, Alice.

Alternatively, I could say that if you click on through, you can watch a peaceful and pleasant video with nine minutes of Ray McCoy standing on his balcony listening to a chill Vangelis cover in Westwood’s old Blade Runner game. On this night of nights, I think you might like it.

Replaying Blade Runner, I’ve found myself taken with that balcony. Aside from one scripted moment of soliloquy, it’s just there, waiting for you to stand on it and soak in the city. I had intended to sorta wedge it into an Alice’s Evening Walk, as enjoying views in game-y games overlaps with parts of what I enjoy in walking simulators, but no, let’s save that thought for another time.

Instead, I’ll ask you: what are some views you’ve enjoyed in video games? Any places you stood and quietly watched it all go by, perhaps breathing in perpetual gloom or a frosty morning? I remember pausing to take in life buzzing around parts of the Citadel in Mass Effect games. The view of Los Angeles from the roof of Grout’s mansion in Bloodlines, little lights trundling along distant roads. Crumbs, I’m doing myself out of a series here, aren’t I?

I wasn’t a huge fan of the music but that hammock was probably my favorite thing to do in Transistor- come to think of it all of my favorite bits were the little world interactions, pausing to take in the landscape and having a brief hum. Not that bashing apart robot monsters wasn’t also fun, but it always felt weirdly incidental to me. I wish all games had a ‘non-hostile’ mode that let you wander around in the environments unpopulated.

Yes, god forbid we reflect on the way games can affect us deeply, quietly, emotionally, forcing us to pause and reflect. Its a real drag when that cerebral shit interferes with our ability to filter straight to the details necessary to carry on the endless parade of consumption of product.

As of writing this, out of the 26 posts on the first two pages, there are 15 news and updates of new/upcoming games, 3 retrospectives of old games, 2 best-of-the-year posts, 2 reviews, 1 interview, 1 WoW post, 1 Christmas Shopping Simulator joke post, and finally, this 1 introspective post by the editor.

Name one recent important PC gaming news RPS has missed. Otherwise, stop being such a baby.

RPS has never been a source of investigative journalism. Once in a while, you would get a short coverage about a specific DRM system derping out, or some behind-closed-doors troubles within a studio/publisher, but that’s it.

Some writers would write some emails to the people involved, and most of the time wouldn’t get an answer, but if there was an answer they would just publish it and comment a little on it, then move to other things. You wouldn’t have a long, thorough investigation, with 20-30 people being called, 5 to 10 people being interviewed and featured in the series of articles, going deep into the subject at hand.

RPS has always been giving the usual news feed/press announcements, once in a while writing about some personal gaming experiences and personal perspectives about some elements of a game or a series of games. Sometime, it’s pretty great.

I don’t really know if there’s any gaming news website that does investigative journalism, actually. I mean, we briefly had Robert Florence doing the Lost Humanity series, but it almost killed Eurogamer with an abusive libel lawsuit (the threat was serious enough to get Rob immediately thrown out of Eurogamer). Now imagine what would happen if any journalist was to take on the big ones like EA or Activision – the lawsuits and blacklisting would be insane.

This is actually one of the main reasons I do like to read RPS. It’s the only games website I can go on and read articles that talk about games in some way other than from the perspective of a robot or totalbiscuit without the comments section exploding into screams of “Hipster douchebag” or “pseudo intellectual!!” or “This isn’t art! I’m never visiting this site ever again!!”. The ironic thing about the last kind of statement is that those kinds of people probably wouldn’t know what art was even if they were beaten over the head with an Anish Kapoor sculpture.

So yeah… As a practising artist, I’ll stick to my “pseudo art” games blogs, thank you very much.

I remember first playing Civ IV and my excitement at realising that when you zoomed the map out far enough it turned into a globe. I zoomed all the way out, nudged the globe with the mouse ever so slightly, and spent a a good few minutes just marvelling at it as it span against the stars.

On a similar note, one of the few things I’ve bothered using Steam’s screenshot feature for is taking photos of sunrises and sunsets in Kerbal Space Program. I… I think I might have an aesthetic weakness for celestial bodies. :s

I used to do stuff like this all the time, including this exact spot. See also: several locations in Monkey Island – the dock, the hill on Monkey Island itself, wandering around Melee Island. People watching in Bloodlines. A huge amount of locations in Lord Of The Rings Online. And probably many more games that my half-asleep brain cannot currently process.

I genuinely enjoyed exploring Guild Wars when it came out, before exploration was a stat towards completion. What possibly made it better and more memorable was the random friends I made on it that explored with me and enjoyed the many views there was to enjoy.
Even to this day I still think it has great art and colours, and lot more charm than GW2 when it comes to discovering a fictional world, but that’s certainly because of all these map collectibles (oh whatever they are called).

I’m another Guild Wars fan. That first view of The Eye of the North. I’m ambivalent about the grinding aspect — I saw some cool places because I got my Legendary Cartographer title, but I also had to schlepp through a few challenge missions and the like that didn’t interest me.

Looking down on my first Daedric Temple in Morrowind from a far high mountain was pretty cool.

That moment you get to the bottom of the archtree and emerge onto the shores of Ash Lake fucking terrified me. That empty, sad expanse at the bottom of the world. And that music. Although there’s obviously enemies and a couple of NPCs down there, no other part of Dark Souls made me feel so utterly alone.

The last place I really remember just sitting back and chilling out enjoying the ambiance is in the Bannered Mare in Whiterun, Skyrim. After a while away adventuring there was nothing I’d like better when getting back to Whiterun, than renting out the room at the Bannered Mare and spend the evening sitting out on the balcony up in the rafters, relaxing and soaking up the atmosphere.

Most games with a high view. Also: Clive Barker’s Undying, the daytime level before you enter the crypt and see your sister, looking out over the low-sun cliffs, waves crashing below (near this bit link to hdwp.net ?).

And yes, I also spent a long time on that Blade Runner balcony. It captures a _mood_ fantastically, as did Captain Blood, or space whales in Starglider 2.

I’ve found when I’m dead in Killing Floor, I can zoom out way above the action, and in my head-canon it turns into something I’d really love to play.

Sort of an action-RPG where you don’t directly control units so much as just position them on the map to try and control choke-points. Keep an eye out for stuff like Scrakes and Fleshpounds and have your units fall back and concentrate fire until the threat passes. Be able to specifically alert specialists like sharpshooters to the presence of scrakes, but don’t take an active roll in shooting.

So… Killing Floor: Calamity, ported to PC (it’s only on Ouya so far :s), and a single player handling the survivors (with aiming/evasive measures done by AI). Tripwire could do that, but they’re quite busy at the moment with Killing Floor 2.

Should come as no surprise, as the vistas were a large part of the appeal of both games, but I distinctly remember moments of appreciation for the views in ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. ICO in particular was technically impressive for the vast draw distance it featured which was uncommon for console games of the time. Seeing parts of the castle you’d not yet encountered but eventually found yourself bounding across was an exciting act of discovery that occurred again and again in that game. In what appears to be a direct homage, I got a lot of the same satisfaction during the “pause and admire the view” moments included in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.

Practically every level in Homeworld – there’s a beauty about that game that I still find unsurpassed to this day. Although if I had to pick one, the scrapyard with the massive superstructures in the distance was always a stand out moment. Somewhat humbling in the sense of scale imparted by it (even if it was just a somewhat low-res skybox!). Needless to say, very much looking forward to the remastered version.

Honourable mention must also go to Freelancer. Some of the weirder systems were fascinating, and flawed as most of the game was, it sure didn’t lack for spectacle. I loved the claustraphobic nature of the nebulas in it, such a simple trick really but one I haven’t really seen replicated in any other games. Here’s hoping No Man’s Sky captures some of that magic, exploring Freelancer’s universe for the first time was utterly compelling.

Yeah, this one sundown at the Preobrazhensky Bridge in STALKER (CoP) stuck with me. Just finished the mission to steal some documents from the nearby Merc base, started back towards the Skadovsk covered to the elbows in Merc gore, clambered up to catwalk on top of the bridge, had a little sit.

“I am an animal, you see that. I don’t have the words, they didn’t teach me the words. I don’t know how to think, the bastards didn’t let me learn how to think. But if you really are all-powerful… all-knowing… then you figure it out! Look into my heart. I know that everything you need is in there. It has to be.”

GTA4 did this for me. They did a lot to redesign and compress the overall feeling of the different districts of new york and It really paid off. I loved how if you left the game idle it would go to first person mode and just silently zoom in on the people walking by. It was a nice addition, Especially when this song came on.

Yes, I totally recall (pun intended) the fantastic noirish atmosphere of Westwood’s Bladerunner when I first played it back in 98… apart from being based my favourite film the story line with 8 different endings was well handled.

Skyrim is another game where I might sit and watch a landscape (I think the way they dumbed down the skill aspects sucked), especially the northern parts of Skyrim during the middle of summer here in Australia I like sitting with the fan on thinking I’m there sitting in a (n)ice cold blizzard.

I don’t have as much time to play games these days, so when I finally do get time to myself I just like to chill out and not play anything fast-moving or complicated. The two games that I’ve found a ‘sense of place’ in are WoW and Poker Night 2 (among others), but those 2 stick out the most.

If you haven’t played Poker Night 2, it’s not much of a game, per se, but it’s pretty fun for what it is. You sit around a table and play poker with several video game characters while they trash talk you. What’s fun about it is just the ‘hang out’ factor. If you win money, you can win different accessories like different playing cards or table covers.

The other experience I vividly remember is in WoW in one of the zones outside of Shattrath – the one with the floating islands and waterfalls (can’t remember the name). I flew up to one of the islands at night time, dismounted, and had my character just sit there as I listened to music. I was also using the NVidia 3d glasses so that added to the experience as well.

Skyrim was definitely up there as well as far as experiences, especially inside the house in Whiterun. I’d come back often just to visit, although I didn’t stay as long there as I did in the other 2 games.

I think one of the other commenters said something about games with an alternate mode to turn enemies off so that you could relax and explore. I think that would be a pretty cool idea for a lot of games and would definitely up the ‘replay’ factor.

I just wanted to say how much I appreciate this refreshed approach to RPS. My favorite gaming place to visit for a decent number of years…unfortunately started to lose me a bit in the last year or so, but now i feel like the personally much adored “Sunday Papers” with their miscellaneous picks of interesting stuff/links, is becoming more and more an everyday experience on RPS with articles such as these.

Any and every view of Midgar from FFVII. I’d apologise for being that guy, but I’m just not sorry in the least. The game takes a lot of flak for what it’s not, and also gets a lot of undue praise, but Midgar as a place has stayed with me for years and years, and I’d say it’s the real star of the show. It’s not ‘just’ a dystopian city, it’s so full of tiny, hand-painted details, so full of stories. It’s full of life – charred, hazy, choking life, but still very much life.

I’ve had this moment with Bioshock Infinite. At the very start when you get to the cloud city.. there’s the enchanting chant.. the floor is all wet, candles.. i just stood there and listened for good couple of minutes.

Even if a lot of people hate it for not being as good as the Heart of Darkness novella*, I really enjoyed the scenery in Spec Ops: The Line, stopping several times during the game to admire the dunes and skyscrapers.

I might replay it just for that – it’s definitely on my “to replay when I’ll get a 3D display system”.

Killing everyone and then sitting on a beach in Far Cry (and Crysis); parking up by a waterfall in NFS 1; obviously Blade Runner (recently replayed) – actually dropped off at my desk watching ‘that’ scene; The Hunter (demo); and I sense that if I could get the music to stay on those ‘bells’ in Far Cry 4 then I’ll be chilling in that at some point.

Completely agree on wanting more of this kind of articles. Thanks Alice. I’ve often paused the loooong walks in Morrowind to admire the landscapes. They were so beautiful that one can’t imagine how the character models were so damn ugly.

No-one’s mentioned the view when you get to the base at the end of Half-Life 2 episode 1? I always felt it was a little cheaty – you were strongly directed to go to the edge of the cliff and go “ooh!” but it was very impressive all the same.

The other one that always stands out for me is Bravil, the swampy city in Oblivion. I remember climbing to the top of a house (they were all built slapdash and on top of each other) and looking out over the murky haze with shacks and a church among the trees. Very atmospheric. I stood there for a while and thought, “I’m going to buy a house here”.

I’m having a hard time picking out specific instances but I know I’ve done this a lot. Looking out over the ledge from your camp in act 2 of Diablo 3 at the city of caldeum is quite enjoyable. It is really detailed. Also the skies in nether storm in WoW are quite interesting.